01:19PM EST - This week, in Hawaii, Qualcomm is holding its annual Snapdragon Tech event. This year we're expecting to hear news on the latest Snapdragon 800-series SoC, movements in Qualcomm's 5G and IoT activities, how Qualcomm is pushing into the server space with its Centriq 2400 line of processors, and also the latest news on how Qualcomm and Microsoft are bringing Windows to a new class of Snapdragon-powered, always connected devices set to attack the mid-range laptop, notebook and perhaps tablet markets, with most major OEMs on-board.

01:24PM EST - Ian is on hand covering the presentation, Andrei will be adding commentary

01:25PM EST - The Tech Summit is a 3 day event this year, with deep-dives and round tables on most of Qualcomm's Snapdragon business. VPs and Engineers will be discussing some of Qualcomm's portfolio, as well as some detailed information about what we might hear about today in this keynote

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I’m still curious why Dell won’t be a launch partner. Granted, Windows RT’s software failures probably left a lasting bad taste in their mouth, but ASUS, Lenovo, and HP are game.

Dell is a big player, #3 in global market share. And I would’ve thought going private would’ve allowed them to take on bigger risks on more exciting projects. Battery life, if it’s as great as claimed, is a huge win.

So...maybe the better question. What does Dell know that we don’t?Reply

They know they don't want to be known for some shit product you buy at Walgreens/CVS out of desperation and then throw in a drawer or trash out of frustration after using it for less than 40 hours. But hey whatever gets Microsoft to that 1 billion Win 10 activation's...Reply

I think you are still soured by Atom/Celeron/Pentium/Windows RT devices. This is a much better class of software and hardware.

People care about battery life. People care about instant-on. People care about "leaving their charging cord behind". This is going to be i5 performance in almost all ***day-to-day tasks*** with Chromebook battery life.Reply

Suuure. Windows Phone 7 was going to be awesome, then Windows Phone 8 was an all new class of greatness, then Windows Phone 10 was making everything perfect. Look at the track record here. Not even touching on RT. Microsoft's track record says this will get dropped. But by all means buy into a platform that will have 1 year of support, then radio science or half-assed gestures just enough to absolve any contract liability, then a tweet from an exec or product lead saying sorry you got F-'dReply

I think Gunbuster has a solid point. MS has a track record of screwing people, especially early adopters who paid a premium for products which were then dropped. I personally think that this kind of thing will be best in chromebooks and so on where the demands are way lower. I just have a very bad experience with emulators in general (games ones tend to work fine, but anyone who has tried to run Windows software in Linux will know how slow and frustrating it can be) and whilst I expect that the apps that have been properly compiled to work natively will work fine (assuming office is in this bracket), I expect those running through the emulator to suffer. That it is shipping with 4GB of RAM says a lot about what they expect people to do on this.

And this brings us to Gunbuster's point - in order to keep up it will require MS to update their specially compiled versions of Windows 10, Office, etc. Pretty sure if you tried to run x86 Publisher with a large document through an emulator on this kind of hardware it would die on its arse. If they decide to can it, like with RT, you end up screwed. And MS is a big, successful company because it is brutal and has no problems with screwing customers when something isn't commercially viable. And that would be a $600 screwing with only your own blood for lubrication.

MS does not have a good enough track record on this for me to invest. I'd much rather spend my money on something that is established as frankly MS treat their customers like crap and not only does that put you off, they need to learn that reputation and reliability are crucial when you're asking for people to invest in a new platform.

I'm not saying this is a crap product, it could be excellent as long as the use case is right (i.e. not too demanding, mostly using software compiled to run natively on the ARM cores and only the occasional dip into emulator hell) and as long as MS keep up support. I trust that QC will although that may be misguided and is based only on my gut feeling rather than on any data.

>MS has a track record of screwing people, especially early adopters who paid a premium for products which were then dropped.

I agree this has happened way too many times in the past, but I don't think they could've convinced AMD, Qualcomm, HP, Lenovo, ASUS, and Sprint to show up to Hawaii to promote this...unless they had pretty decent support here. Remember, half of these companies were BURNED hard on Windows RT. Why would they ever want to give Microsoft another chance...unless it was decent enough?

We do need to wait for it to come, but blatant dismissals just because "it's emulation" are absolutely unwarranted.

As a counterexample to Windows RT and Windows Phone, look at Surface. It went from meh to average to good to great. It's still not my first choice ($$$$), but they've iterated quite well in some places.

>I just have a very bad experience with emulators in general (games ones tend to work fine, but anyone who has tried to run Windows software in Linux will know how slow and frustrating it can be) and whilst I expect that the apps that have been properly compiled to work natively will work fine (assuming office is in this bracket), I expect those running through the emulator to suffer. That it is shipping with 4GB of RAM says a lot about what they expect people to do on this.

Your previous emulators: did Microsoft include CPU-specific native-code DLLs for those emulators? Did they use first-run re-compiling into native code? If not, it's not comparable to the new CHPE system in Windows on ARM. There's a big difference between "a generic emulator" and CHPE.

>in order to keep up it will require MS to update their specially compiled versions of Windows 10, Office, etc.

They already do this for those located on the Windows Store. What was the point of Windows 10 S if not to put more attention onto the Windows Store?

>If they decide to can it, like with RT, you end up screwed.

Or...you just run x86 apps with insane battery life?... Where is the screwing?

>MS does not have a good enough track record on this for me to invest. I'd much rather spend my money on something that is established as frankly MS treat their customers like crap and not only does that put you off, they need to learn that reputation and reliability are crucial when you're asking for people to invest in a new platform.

Oh, nobody should invest a dime until there are reviews. I won't buy one if it's not up to snuff in day-to-day tasks and the battery life results are as close to what they're promising.

Sure, on an emotional level, I also don't like how Microsoft ham-fisted their way into touch (remember Windows 8? I remember Windows 8) and mobile-first computing. But I do see a difference between 2010 Microsoft and 2017 Microsoft. Maybe I'm the only one.

Let's wait for benchmarks and reviews. I don't think it's terrible enough to be DOA, but I don't think it's a holy grail either (where is Dell? Where are AT&T and Verizon?).Reply

Ikjadoon - all I'll say to that very fine set of counter points is... Yeh, I can't really disagree too much with most of what you've said. I think if MS want to prove themselves to have changed then this is the product they'll have to stand behind. It's potential is great. I think it'll live or die on its emulator. How they treated people by tricking them into windows 10 upgrades was a disgrace and I personally think this proves they have not changed but I am willing to be convinced.

That these companies are coming back for more doesn't prove to me that they are going to keep Microsoft on track / on board. That company is a behemoth and will do as it pleases and past experience shows to me that they're willing to screw hardware partners over just as much as consumers. They know that we all need them.

You are right regarding my previous use of emulators. They have all been essentially amateur efforts rather then supported by MS and also of note it has been over a decade since I last tried one. I prefer to just use Windows...

The comment about being screwed if they stop supporting it is assuming that the emulation isn't as good as they're making out but it would also leave security holes if they revoked support entirely. Whether they'd go this far or not us questionable but for me it's the fact that the question is open to be asked without an immediate "if course they wouldn't" that causes deep concern.

Perhaps the pricing is different here in the UK but I'd never buy a new laptop with less than 8GB. That's more about longevity than actual immediate need. My current laptop is 6 years old and still going strong which gives you an idea of how I invest for the long term.

You are right about surface but you sure as hell pay through the nose for it. Windows phone had such potential, it's a real shame.

Thanks again for taking the time to provide the comprehensive reply. Always good to engage in discussion rather than argument on the net. Reply

Have you seen a single demo? You act like this is "all brand-new, we've never seen this before." "They just sprung this on us! We've absolutely no idea of any of it works or even seeing in real-life. It's never been in a functioning system with a major OEM. Does it even boot in under an hour?"Don't belittle with your accusations. People can watch the demos: they're *all* over YouTube at this point. Of course I don't work at Qualcomm, but I also realize what a normal consumer wants. It ain't Geekbench, kitten.